With destructive weather events like the tornado that ripped through Barrhaven in 2023 and the Jasper wildfires on the rise, federal officials say it’s time to take a more modern and coordinated approach to respond to disasters. Public Safety Minister Eleanor Olszewski led a tour through Canada’s new Government Operations Centre in Ottawa on Friday, outlining the federal government’s plans to respond faster and more efficiently when communities are hit. The hub is designed to monitor emergencies across the country and direct federal support during major events. The room features two large screens allowing staff to monitor two separate events when needed. Olszewski says the government is also enhancing the federal alerting system, aiming to provide clearer, faster and easier-to-understand emergency notifications. “We’re investing more than $55 million over four years to renew the National Public Alert System… to ensure that this really important, in fact, critical system is available for Canadians in the long term,” Olszewski says. Included in the 2025 federal budget is a proposal to allocate $257.6 million over four years to lease waterbomber aircraft starting in 2026-2027. The announcements come a year after one the worst weather events in Canadian History, the Jasper wildfires that burned through the National Park and forced nearly 25,000 people to evacuate. One senior government official says it’s hard to say if these new investments would have limited the fire’s impact, but they may have prompted a quicker response. “This is a purpose-built space that makes us not have to improvise those things and that enables us to make more timely decisions to ensure partners are fully engaged and to be able to focus on the response and not necessarily on the logistics of the coordination.” Staff are expected to move from the older Government of Canada building in early January, and the new facility will come online in the weeks that follow.
